Tag Archives: Advertising

From what I remember, it all started with hype. Y’know that feeling that you get when a new game’s coming out or something truly incredible happens; yeah, that hype. It swept over them, causing songs of joy and excitement to be played and heard all across the world.

But, it was only a matter of time…

The hype eventually turned into disappointment. It wasn’t what they thought it would be. They thought it was going to be great, but it turned out subpar. They were promised an ending, but instead were given a bad ending. This disappointment planted its seeds, growing with each passing minute until they saw the ending and it sprouted into hatred. This hatred blossomed into rage, and here we are, now filing federal complaints because of the ending to Mass Effect 3.

I didn’t know about the apparent “rageathon” until earlier this week when I decided to peruse the Mass Effect 3 thread on ACen’s community forums. It was there that I saw the shadow of doubt and the seeds of disappointment being woven into the hearts and minds of those hyped people. I almost shed a tear, knowing what was going to happen next.

And yesterday, as I tried to decide what to write about, an article on Kotaku answered my plea for a subject – a user on Bioware‘s forums filed a federal case because of how disappointed he was. According to Kotaku, user “El_Spiko” went to the Federal Trade Commission‘s website and filed a complaint for false advertising because of how Electronic Arts and the Better Business Bureau advertised Mass Effect 3. According to him, they promised a stellar ending, so I dug into the Internet and wanted to see exactly what the fans were being told, and I actually did find a thread that has a rather comprehensive list of quotes from interviews about the ending and the game itself (complete with links to these interviews).

So, I read through a lot of them, and as an outsider (I’ve never played the series. I’ve never really been interested), they looked like really big claims. From what I gathered from reading some of the comments in the thread, I’m guessing that the ending is roughly the same for everyone, no matter what choices you make, and Bioware specifically promised them that each ending would be unique based on how you played.

Now, a lot of comments are saying that the guy is going overboard, that this lawsuit is frivolous. I don’t think the lawsuit was a wise decision; in fact, I think it’s hilarious that this guy is really getting this worked up over an ending, but hey, if the guy’s pissed about being lied to, then there’s nothing actually wrong with him filing the complaint. Bioware did promise a lot, and from what I’m looking at, it seems like they didn’t keep a lot of those promises, and that is false advertising, so El_Spiko is not in the wrong.

If anything progresses from this, you just have to hope that El_Spiko knows what he’s doing.